That said, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if a certain stigma animated her protestations, if only in part; after all, the dance form known as “twerking”, with its brazen bawdiness, attracts more than its fair share of detractors. A recent example arose in response to a vid by metal band Mastodon featuring a troupe of buttock-bouncing video vixens, fresh from a hip-hop promo. No sooner had the band released their clip for ‘The Motherload’, the lead single from their new album, Once More ‘Round the Sun, than a cacophony of voices in and around the metal world let forth an adversity of reactions. Some (like Yours Truly) found themselves bemused and/or amused by the incongruous mish-mash of rumps and riffs; others were outraged/dismayed by what they saw as the intrusion of hip-hop/ghetto/”black” culture into “their” music; still others, like long-time metal journo Dom Lawson, saw fit to assume the mantle of social justice warrior, taking the band to task for the “crass misogyny” and “blatant, idiotic and utterly pointless sexism” that supposedly informs their video.

True to the narrative of Lawson and other “social justice” types, Mastodon drummer-vocalist-lyricist Brann Dailor stepped up to defend the the pneumatic promo, describing it as both a subversion of “esoteric” ‘90s rock and metal vids and an “all-inclusive” shout-out to the band’s home state of Atlanta, the women featured being co-natives. “MRDA,” the white-knight contingent might say, seated comfortably in their righteous indignation…

…but what if the damsels willingly courted the dragon? The words of Jade, one of the jelly-jigglers featured in the clip, seem to suggest so; on none other than SJW sanatorium Tumblr, she made her side of the story heard:

Within minutes of the video dropping, there was a serious backlash. While most people seemed to “get” the band’s shout out to their hometown, Atlanta, others called it racist and sexist. Some people even called us dirty niggers and whores. Funny, the most sexist and racist sentiments came not from filming the actual video, but from a subset of metal fans who thought we simply didn’t belong. If anything, the video shoot was welcoming, the band clever and pleasant, and the girls bonded almost the second the music dropped. Much like the band, we weren’t concerned with thin, knee-jerk reactions to asses and twerking.

…

One of the reasons this video, for me, is garnering so much attention is that truly the women are not just asses—and there are a lot of fantastic asses in the building—but shown as 3D people, which scares folk. Another is the concern for cultural appropriation. From us and from them. The fear of metal being “tainted”, the fear of the band using a dance form associated with black culture for their own gain. These fears boil down into my one response: we all belong…..The guys are ATL homegrown. As much as metal is in their bones, so is trap music, so is Old Fourth Ward, so is Magic City. They repped Georgia not out of exploitation, but because it resonates with them and is a part of them. This video proves that metal can reach out and can be reached out to without parody, without hierarchy, and it is a good thing.

Ask us if it was racist or sexist. We were the ones right there experiencing it. I’ll tell you from my view: no.

Welp, social justice warriors, pop goes your narrative! Then again, when you insist on projecting your Galahad fantasies onto the world, such dissonance must become something of a constant over time. The unceasing furore over women choosing to twerk in a variety of “misogynist”, “racist”, and “degrading” contexts has been especially prevalent in entertainment media over the past year, ever since Miley Cyrus brought the act to mainstream attention with her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. Prog pundits clamoured to complain about the “degradation” and “cultural appropriation” of her piece, not only for her own (derrière-deficient) wobbles, but also for her employment of more melanin(-and-mound)-infused movers ‘n’ shakers; in regard to the latter transgression, both Lily Allen and Taylor Swift would also find themselves in the firing line for employing bountiful black booty to shiftsingles — it’s like slavery, I tells ya!

From my vantage point, their social justice sloganeering can’t help but be tinged by a certain irony; with their use of slavery analogies to describe this phenomenon, these crusaders casually and effectively whitewash all agency away from those they claim to champion. The prospect that maybe, just maybe, these twerking girls (black and otherwise) actually enjoy bouncing their backsides in front of a camera never seems to occur to them. The sight of the Mastodon mapouka girls laughing and joking at the end of the vid struck me as a nice, humanising touch, one pretty much overlooked by the likes of Lawson. Just as most prozzies aren’t sobbing, trembling sex-slave props, but simply women who make a considered choice not to the majority’s liking, why can’t a similar schematic apply to (Not-So-)Little Miss Booty Bounce?

As in the case of sex workers, prog scolds seem to need a faceless, voiceless mound of brutalised bodies – real or perceived — to stand atop for self-validation.

The whole “cultural appropriation” angle shines a spotlight on another ugly aspect of their worldview; that which is derided as sexist, misogynistic, and repulsive one day gets effectively sanctified as a sacred cultural practice which must not be defiled by perceived outsiders the next. As writer (and Infernophile) Émelyne Museaux points out in regards to the what she terms “the Cyrus Conundrum”:

Miley Cyrus has not-so-recently taken to having voluptuous Black women (who were baselessly labeled as strippers) in her music videos, wearing removable gold plates on her teeth, collaborating with rappers and (most infamously) twerking. Twerking, a dance trend that involves wining, gyrating, and isolating your butt cheeks, has exploded all over the internet, with women of all shapes, sizes and races partaking in it. The educated Black person often feels disgraced upon seeing this, while the Black feminist is torn between what they view as the erotification of Black girls and women, and a woman’s right to own her sexuality. Both groups, however, want to distance themselves as much as possible from twerking….until a White woman does it. And this is where the problem comes in.

….

The educated Black person will be the first to defend a Black kid who plays hockey, or listens to rock music. We’ll defend Black women, Queens of the Black culture, from racist attacks that say that all we do is twerk and have babies. But, somehow, twerking, the very thing that so many Black people loathe to see a Black woman performing and being subsequently judged for, is now a part of “our culture” and must be defended the moment a White woman does it. Let me reiterate: You all hated this toy and tried desperately to dispose of it, until another kid came along and wanted to play with it. Now it’s your favourite and you want to throw a damn tantrum.

In other words, thanks to the wonders of “intersectionality”, identity politics, and plain old-fashioned essentialism, black American progressives find themselves acting from a rather lamentable ethos: “It may be trash, but it’s our trash!” Of course, this is but one head of the hydra known as “cultural appropriation” theory, a train of thought whose adherents, in rhetoric and practice, often come across as 21st century prog analogues of George Wallace. Ém, too, picks up on the irony…

As much as Black people as a group bemoan the many negative characteristics and actions that are associated with us, and Black feminists gripe about a woman’s right to express her sexuality, to live and work on her own terms, this CC has exposed so many of you as hypocrites. You sound like the racists who said that Chuck Berry shouldn’t sing rock n’ roll, because he was Black and hijacking American (read: White) culture. You sound like the idiots who tell an eloquent Black guy in skinny jeans (like notable producer Pharell) that he’s “acting White”. All the CC has done is showcase that Black people are willing to set the Civil Rights movement back for the sake of a dance trend, short shorts and gold chains, and that we only want integration when, where, and how it suits us.

Listening to these activists and crusaders, I find myself wondering whether or not to set aside that succulent piece of fried chicken for the sake of “racial integrity”; fortunately, sense soon sets in, leading me to discard the nonsensical notion in favour of my own enjoyment once again. I suspect many on the twerk team feel the same way regarding their activity of choice, the personal not always being political after all.

For some, twerking evokes thoughts of exploitation, degradation, and cultural appropriation; for others, “degeneracy” and the downfall of Western civilisation. I simply see it as another form of art; not “high art”, to be sure, but certainly not without its cheek-bouncing charm: ass-thetic entertainment for both punter and participant.

To all the griping, grousing busybodies — SJW and reactionary alike — I can only say: Butt out!

Retinal Reprobation

This is a great episode. Listen here. ————————————————— In this season three opener we review what the intention is for the 2018 season. This initial set of four conversations (of which this first is more of a presentation) cover four themes. Second Wave Anarchy, Indigenous anarchism, the (im)possibility of social change, and Earth centeredness. This is to s […]

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A few days ago, I sent this "open letter" (which is reprinted below, and which you are free to reprint anywhere) to select publishers and 9BB newsletter subscribers. It's probably an impotent gesture, but I want to encourage folks who...

I just wanted to share a few quick thoughts on the recent strike called by the UCU, that is affecting many British universities across the country. The cause of these strikes is allegedly the government’s new pension scheme, which will not be advantageous to teaching staff. While it may be that there are legitimate reasons… Continue reading A Note on the Rec […]

Originally posted on The Ludwig von Mises Centre: Peter Tatchell and the Total State Sean Gabb 13th January 2018 Peter TachellSource: Wikipedia I have some respect for Peter Tatchell. He campaigned against the anti-homosexual laws before this was a safe thing to do. He has shown courage on other issues. This being said, I am…

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Death Wish was generally panned by film critics - who are almost all a bunch of weak faggots that are scared of guns. That, and not its content, is the main reason it suffered in the reviews. While Death Wish is nowhere near as cool as the original, it's certainly not bad as far as action movies goes. It eschews slow-motion except for a target shooting […]

The reading list has been up now for a week or two, and I figured it would be worthwhile to provide a synopsis of each work and explain how each fits into what might loosely be considered the ‘ZM worldview’. This actually might be one of the most efficient methods of making it clear just […]

In 2011 the Scottish Government Executive* passed the stunningly illiberal Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. Judge it by its defenders: a Scottish National Party Member of the Scottish Parliament called John Mason said, “We should all know by now expressing political views is no longer acceptable at football matches.” He framed the issue as if the only th […]

In Britain in the 21st century you can be punished for mocking gods. You can be expelled from the kingdom, frozen out, if you dare to diss Allah. Perversely adopting medieval Islamic blasphemy laws, modern Britain has made it clear that it will tolerate no individual who says scurrilous or reviling things about the Islamic god or prophet. Witness the authori […]

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I've had a hard time getting myself to sit down and write about this. I've procrastinated for days, always finding something else to do, other than think about this blogpost....or the Twitterhate writing about this subject could bring, from the antis and 'Rational Centrists' - who are usually...you know... *totally* believably moderate a […]

Remember when we didn't need to discuss Nazis all the time? Like...back in the day...early 2016-2015. Good times, those were :(So what's this big fuss over the New York Times Nazi Article? What's got everyone so upset? Are the Regressive Leftists being regressive again? God why can't they tolerate different ideas...Did these lefty cucks r […]

Join me, Ann, and David as we welcome writer, blogger, and columnist Kathy Shaidle! In honor of our special guest, this episode is dedicated to CANADA! As Wolfe said to Montcalm on that fateful day in 1759, “Too bad we’re both gonna die, eh, cuz now we’re gonna miss the Savage Hippie Vodcast featurin’ Kathy […]

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Strange Moments in Cultural History is the class you never took in high school. Grab a seat up front and turn off your brain as we fill your head with tales of oddballs, villains, outcasts, flops and other lesser-known events in this thing we call human existence.

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Strange Moments in Cultural History is the class you never took in high school. Grab a seat up front and turn off your brain as we fill your head with tales of oddballs, villains, outcasts, flops and other lesser-known events in this thing we call human existence.

Tensions rise on the range after wolf kills cow in California for the first time in a century: A wolf has killed a California rancher’s cow for the first time in more than 100 years, raising tensions in the newly reclaimed wolf country in California’s rugged northeastern corner. California now has two packs in the […]

An excellent open access paper is out in Cell which explores the distribution of archaic hominin, and in particular Denisovan, ancestry, Analysis of Human Sequence Data Reveals Two Pulses of Archaic Denisovan Admixture: Anatomically modern humans interbred with Neanderthals and with a related archaic population known as Denisovans. Genomes of several Neander […]

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by Thomas R. EddlemLeftist gun-banners have claimed that America's policy of wide gun ownership has led to higher homicide rates. But the data doesn't show this:Methodology: I took Wikipedia's pages on "List of Countries by Intentional Homicide Rates" and "Estimated Number of Guns Per Capita By Country" and cross-referenced […]

by Thomas R. EddlemHow the gun control lobby lies with phony statistics:First, they only count "gun violence." This includes suicide by gun. It doesn't count other means of murder or suicide, such as driving trucks into crowds or suicide by poison or other means. Not including these statistics skews the figures greatly, often by several of the […]

by Thomas R. Eddlem“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's going to do it? You? … I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rath […]

The Search for “Chicago’s Great Soul” When Chicago was the intellectual and literary heart of America — and incredibly it once was — its nerve center was a rambling old barn in back of 876 1/2 North Dearborn Parkway, or, more specifically, at 18 Tooker Place. You walked down an alley and found, between two […]

A beautiful facsimile made from high resolution scans of an original copy of the 1975 booklet. 17th issue of the egoist journal “Stand Alone”. What is Man’s Destiny? by Laurance Labadie introduction by Mark A. Sullivan 5.5″ x 8.5″, Saddle-stitched Limited to 66 copies. Order: Underworld Amusements “All through history invasion, conquest, subjugation, enslav […]

A Unanimous Conviction. The other day I passed by a large and apparently flourishing rock pile whereon many of my brothers were working with shameless lack of enthusiasm. One of these I recognized as belonging to a highly respectable family. To him I said, “does not your uncle have a most successful establishment at the […]

In February 2018, The Zambian Observer published an article entitled “Witches and Wizards Are Very Important to the Development of Our Economy – Prof[essor] Luo”. According to the article, Nkandu Luo, a professor and Higher Education Minister in Zambia, said that her country ought to utilize “witchcraft technology” to aid the development of the nation. […]

It is said, and accurately, that “people starved under Communism”. What is typically meant by “Communism”, of course, is the ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), which was founded by Bolshevikrevolutionaries in Russia in 1917 and collapsed in 1991. [Note: sovietmeans “council”, and Bolshevikmeans “majority”]. The ideol […]

Today we have the return of Bruce Lyon, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Bruce’s notes are indented: Point Reyes National Seashore is a lovely area in the coast 30 miles north of San Francisco. I have lived in California for two decades but only recently […]

Well, the weekend is over, though Grania tells me that today, March 19, 2018, is a “bank holiday” in Ireland, marking St. Paddy’s Day. It’s also National Oatmeal Cookie Day, the WORST of all possible cookies. I can’t think of a cookie I’d like to eat less. Over in Poland, everyone’s celebrating Kashubian Unity Day. […]

I want to start the week with a Laura Nyro song, “Blowing Away“, from her 1967 album “More Than a New Discovery”. The Fifth Dimension recorded this two years later, but I like Nyro’s version better. She was born in 1947, so the oldest she could have been when she wrote this song was twenty. […]

I do feel, quite deeply, that America is changing rapidly; a certain old essence is disappearing, even faster than when I was young. In such cases I think of my father, an old-stock American, Vietnam vet, lover of God, Guns, and Glory–basically all your red state stereotypes. While chatting with parents down at the local … Continue reading Further thoughts o […]

Today’s post is on James Frazer’s Totemism and Exogamy, published in 1910. This book came highly recommended, but I found it disappointing–too similar to a variety of works we’ve already reviewed, including some of the works that kicked off Anthroplogy Friday in the first place. Nevertheless, I’ve been hoping to do something on India, which … Continue readin […]

Stephen Hawking was one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists, not only because of his prodigious intellect, but also because he succeeded in the face of one of the most debilitating diseases possible. ALS normally kills people in 3 to 4 years; Hawking survived for decades. So far there is no word on what finally … Continue reading RIP Professor Hawking […]

There are a lot of motivational books about how to get the success you want. Millions of people buy those books every year, but few people end up satisfied with what they have in life. Why? We talk a lot about how to get what we want, but we rarely talk about how to know […]

I felt panic when I got the photo assignment. I was an 18-year-old part-time reporter and photographer with only a couple of months experience. Sports editor Mike Kilgore handed me a piece of paper with an assignment for later that night — and I had no idea how to do what he wanted. The assignment […]

Starting when I was a freshman in college, I worked as a part-time newspaper reporter. As the youngest and most inexperienced person in my newsroom, I was given the assignments nobody else wanted. The job taught me how little I knew about people. I frequently went to a home or office out in the middle […]

In Spring 2019, the UK is meant to leave the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May soldiers on, but many think she can’t get the job done. Former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair gave ruthless speeches again May, and EU’s lead Brexit negotiator accused May of being “vague” and “not credible”. Major–a member of […]

The University and College Union (UCU)–Britain’s trade union for academics–has gone on strike. The strike is about the University Superannuation Scheme (USS)’s decision to switch academics from “defined benefit” pension plans to “defined contribution” plans. As a PhD student at Cambridge I write this piece at home, having skipped a couple events I really wan […]

The University and College Union (UCU)–Britain’s trade union for academics–has gone on strike. The strike is about the University Superannuation Scheme (USS)’s decision to switch academics from “defined benefit” pension plans to “defined contribution” plans. As a PhD student at Cambridge I write this piece at home, having skipped a couple events I really wan […]

In Episode Four, I interview Simon Tam, founder of The Slants and victorious Supreme Court litigant, about his right to repurpose an epithet to fight racism and celebrate the fighters who came before him. A few resources from the episode: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion The Supreme Court's opinion The Oyez […]

By Marc J. Randazza A Nevada court previously ordered the censorship of autopsy reports stemming from the Las Vegas massacre. (source) Today, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed that decision as an unlawful prior restraint. (Opinion Here.) The lower court's order would have forced members of the press to allow government officials to freely rummage thr […]

Kenneth Eng is on the other side of viral now, where it's hard to see him. 11 years ago, in 2007, it was easy to see him. He achieved a brief burst of viral infamy for writing a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks," inexplicably published by the now-defunct AsianWeek. He had every quality we […]

I haven’t posted in a while, so here’s some of what I’ve been up to. Three articles at Splice Today, in chronological order: “Bannon is Right About Austrian Economics” “Adam Sandler’s New Film Is Weird Evidence of His Republicanism” “Optics and Allies”

Here is a Constellation of Man preview taken from recent drafts, just a bit late for Halloween. It illustrates a technique I mentioned in August: developing the subjects I have in mind by intuitive branching from an arresting cluster of imagery, instead … Continue reading →

Another preview from The Constellation of Man, in Vol. III. —CPB THERE IS A TALE of a shipwrecked man who washed ashore on an island naked and bereft, whom the islanders discovered, and proclaimed king. At first taken aback by his fortune, … Continue reading →

Video journal by underground philosopher Colin Patrick Barth on the art of writing original philosophy (in the Nietzschean tradition), with insights into the creative process of writing a 3-volume work of literature, “The Constellation of Man.” Recorded August 11, 2017. Included … Continue reading →

By Jack Neison As many understand, I am extremely skeptical of what I call “libertarian bumper sticker slogans.” I have criticized the popular internet slogan “taxation is theft” for being too broad and simplistic a statement to cover the preferences of all individuals. Personally, I do not want to be taxed, and so if I … Continue reading "Black Marke […]

By Jack Neison It’s no secret that I have a healthy distaste for authority. Rather than complain about authority, however, I find it far more productive to dissect and deconstruct authority in order to fully understand its effects on my own life. Two questions come to mind immediately: First, why do I dislike authority so … Continue reading "Authorit […]

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I’m a huge gun rights advocate. I’ve been shooting and collecting guns since I was twelve. I got my first AR-15 thirty years ago, at age sixteen. I joined the Marine Corps Reserve at seventeen and became an infantry weapons repairman and marksmanship coach, and later was a tank crewman, cavalry scout and human intelligence […]

[If you haven’t watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi yet, don’t read this.] As it turns out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi wasn’t just a science fiction movie. In reality, it was a lesson about sexism that we men badly needed. Or something. According to those who find a misogynist under every rock, Poe Dameron’s […]

Shortly after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published this cover: The caption reads, “God exists! He drowned all the neo-nazis of Texas!” We should all know about Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper has a long history of attacking anyone they deem worthy, usually with crude and offensive cartoons. That wasn’t much of a proble […]

Star Wars: the Force Awakens was a pretty good movie, but Rey might become a Mary Sue. Not because of anything that is wrong with her. Her personality is fine, her actress was fine, but the rules of her own … Continue reading →

It’s annoying when a feminist sees a movie and calls it misogynist because some character said something that her paranoid mind interpreted as her favorite type of oppression. It’s not any cuter coming from the opposite political side. If politics … Continue reading →

There is one scene in the book that many people hate. It makes Dagny look like a cold-blooded killer to them. I was looking forward to reading it and judging Dagny’s actions for myself. John Galt is captured and is … Continue reading →

photo credit: Bigstock A hundred years ago, the sun never set on the British Empire. These days, England’s rulers are blowing out the candles and telling the citizens to enjoy the darkness. Last week brought news of yet another sexual grooming scandal of underage girls perpetrated mostly by Muslims with roots in the Middle East upon poor and lower-class indi […]

photo credit: Bigstock If you oppose globalism in any way, you must be some kind of Nazi. At least that’s the message I’m getting from the slavishly pro-globalist press. It’s long been my suspicion that this extended, cringeworthy, and now years-long display of wantonly reckless public diaper-shitting known as “The Resistance” to Donald Trump—which has tweak […]

photo credit: Bigstock As one of the very few writers whose work resulted in a government-sponsored attempt at censorship, I can say quite confidently that the government is no longer the biggest threat to free expression in America. It’s the corporations. One of my countless gripes about the grotesquely empty public display of sneering moral condescension t […]

Well, it took some time, but I’m finally here. I officially support Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and the Presidency of the United States. I’m told by the MSM that demographically, I shouldn’t. Trump supporters are supposed to be poor and stupid. I am middle class with a post-graduate degree in Political Science. Granted, […]

Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. — Ps. 145:3-4 (in the Catholic Douay-Rheims) It’s been a while since I had time to write, and weekends may be the only time I can realistically do so given my two jobs. However I do think it is […]

I’m not quite ready to put a “Trump 2016” sign on my lawn, but I’m getting there. I had planned on supporting Rand Paul, but as I said in my last post, Rand Paul now sucks. He lied about the Ayatollah of Iran’s statement regarding the nuclear deal in a shameless and despicable way, and […]

I shared some satire about gun control last month, but the left’s campaign to exploit the horrible Parkland shooting seems to have instigated a bunch of new material. So let’s have some weekend fun. We’ll start with this humorous image from Reddit‘s libertarian page that actually does a good job of showing that gun control […]

A couple of decades can make a huge difference in the political and economic life of a jurisdiction. Two decades ago, Venezuela had not yet been subjected to the horror of Hugo Chavez and his destructive statism. Three decades ago, the pro-market success story of Estonia was an enslaved part of the totalitarian Soviet Union. […]

I have a special page to highlight honest left wingers, and I’ve acknowledged several who have confessed that gun control is misguided. Jeffrey Goldberg admits gun ownership reduces crime. Justin Cronin explains how he became a left-wing supporter of gun rights. Jamelle Bouie pours cold water on Obama’s gun control agenda. Leah Libresco confesses that gun co […]

The Middle Ages, as that dodgy sage Carl Jung once wrote, “live on… merrily”. That’s no surprise, really. Superstition will always be with us, in new forms—and in old. Crux: ROME – With reported demonic possessions on the rise in Italy, the Vatican is hosting a week-long training to better prepare exorcists for ministry. Catholic […]

Ronald Bailey, writing in Reason: The meme of Frankenstein as a mad scientist who unleashed a disastrously uncontrollable creation on the world has been hijacked by anti-modernity, anti-technology ideologues to push for all manner of bans and restrictions on the development and deployment of new technologies… For decades, the specter of Frankenstein’s monste […]

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (HT Tyler Cowen) ruminates on the past and present of Catholicism and how it stacks up to the influence of Silicon Valley. In short he claims that it’s, well, falling short in the modern age: A simple glance at the history of the church should show that the current situation is anomalous. As Rodney Stark, […]

Why the Truth Is Stranger than Fiction Last evening, Carol and I were watching the latest episodes of the Hulu TV series The Path. It is an excellent show illustrating, among other things, the dangers of transformative piety, what I … Continue reading →

Last Friday evening, Cecilia, my mother-in-law and pal, and my wonderful wife Carol, and I were sitting around shooting the breeze after watching John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness and the season finale of The Exorcist TV series. Not surprisingly, the … Continue reading →

Has it ever struck you as pathetically absurd when you hear a defense attorney for a convicted fiend seek mitigation for him, arguing that he was made the man-monster he is by terrible childhood abuse? It seems a last-ditch tactic. … Continue reading →

photo credit: BIgstock I found out last week that the Wendy Bell lawsuit, which I covered in November 2016, has been settled. Bell was a popular anchorwoman at ABC affiliate WTAE in Pittsburgh. In early 2016, a black family was massacred in the high-crime, predominantly black Pittsburgh-adjacent borough of Wilkinsburg. On her personal blog, Bell speculated t […]

photo credit: Bigstock I am so sick of David Hogg, the pompadorable Parkland school shooting “survivor” and media-darling gun control activist. And I feel an intense need to publicly say just how sick I am of this kid, because, apparently, criticism of David Hogg has been added to the left’s ever-expanding list of “hate speech.” Seriously, I haven’t seen suc […]

photo credit: Bigstock I hate to say this, because the last thing I ever want to sound like is a writer for Salon, but damn, this “debate” over school shootings is so very…white. I’ve mentioned before, and it bears repeating at the moment, that as a child I attended majority black L.A. public schools. Well, “majority black” is an accurate label for my junior […]

The Clinton campaign was so overconfident they would win the election, they planned to launch fireworks over the Hudson River on election night. When they cancelled the fireworks the weekend before the election, a lot of people suspected their internal polling showed they were in trouble.Then, after the election, the media naturally looked for incidents of T […]

Hillary Clinton once defended an accused rapist when she was a public defender. Clinton eventually had him plead to a lesser offense. See here.Throughout this campaign, pro-Trump supporters have been saying that the accused was, in fact, a rapist, that Clinton knew he was a rapist, and that Clinton laughed about the "rapist's" twelve-year-old […]

It was discovered in March 2015 that during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email server for official communications, thus comprising United States security. To insure that no one could see what she was up to, Clinton deleted thousands of emails with a software program called “BleachBit," and an aide to […]

Immigration sense from Ben Sixsmith: But what of proposed merits of open borders? A consistent failure of the Economist’s article is a reluctance to distinguish between different migrants. If one finds the study, it turns out that 54% of the men and women who expressed a desire to migrate came from Africa and the Middle […]

Everywhere signs of a Great Ending: Gramsci marched right through the institutions and clear off the cliff on the other side with the buildings tumbling after him. The established secular church of the Western left has fallen; it is now just another religion, like Christianity, Buddhism or Islam. Its special status as the high priesthood […]

The charge of scientism is both unreflectively made and unreflectively dismissed; wielded by cranks and bores and brushed off by the smug and the superficial. Given this, its meaning, and its significance, is unclear. Some believe, indeed, that it has … Continue reading →

The English poet Philip Larkin died thirty-two years ago but was perhaps England’s last truly popular poet. It is not surprising that he is remembered. His poems are accessible, in style and in theme, compared to his modern successors. They … Continue reading →

A new year is a time for reflection; a time to think about the past, and the present, and the future; a time to cherish what is good and assess what is bad; a time to think about what can … Continue reading →

Jacob Levy recently wrote an essay airing his teary-eyed dismay that so many of his libertarian friends are cheering on Britain’s bow down from EU membership. This comes to no surprise, since BHL seems to be bent on presenting us with the “libertarian case” for anything from a swollen welfare apparatus to mandatory sex-reassignment surgery. … Continue readin […]

“But, isn’t private property a monopoly on the legitimate use of force” whinges the socialist, “since, after all, the proprietor is allowed to keep people off his land?”. Let’s figure out what a monopoly on the legitimate use of force actually means, first. Everyone who’s brought up the Weberian definition of the state in conversation has inevitably … Contin […]

Disclaimer: If we’ve been away for almost two months, it’s because our dear leader, Comrade Dylan, was grounded for shooting up some church in South Carolina, during which period he couldn’t hang out with his friends or go on the Internet. It’s been about 20 or so years since books like The Sovereign Individual … Continue reading Guerilla Capitalism in Ca […]

One of my dear Progressive friends gave me a book by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, called The Bone Clocks. I finished it a couple months ago. It’s Mitchell’s most recent work, and I haven’t read anything else by him to which I could compare it. Despite Mitchell’s ability to balance a quick-moving plot with fanciful prose, prose that measures higher […]

Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City is a fact-filled book about the histories, cultures, economies, languages, and more, of these European microstates. The book also contains information for prospective travellers to the microstates of Europe. While the book is almost […]

[G]overnment interference in university education was not the outcome of a public outcry that university provision was of poor quality, but an act of control and subsequently of protectionism. In the collection of writings making up the book The University Outside State Control, Professor John Kersey makes the historical point that Government intervention in […]

The British election is a success for the strategy that Theresa May pursued: winning over middle aged and elderly working class voters in the post-industrial north. According to a Yougov survey released on Tuesday, she increased the Tory share of voters with a GCSE or less from 38% in 2015 to 55%. In a very … Continue reading Sporadic thoughts on British Gen […]

It is perhaps no coincidence that Stoner rhymes with loner. John Williams’s eponymous novel is an exquisite distillation of what it means to be alone. Not primarily a physical loneliness, an absence of intimacy, but a spiritual loneliness: the sense that no one in the world truly understands you. But more than that it is … Continue reading Review of “Stoner” […]

To anyone sufficiently familiar with the politics of the contemporary student left, attempts to censor speakers for the alleged crime of bigotry should not come as a surprise. Neither should the endorsement of Islamists and their list of grievances. Nevertheless, the endorsement by young progressives of a society that promotes regressive speakers in the serv […]

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page). Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. You … Continue reading →

A few months ago, I wrote Toward A Predictive Theory Of Depression, which used the predictive coding model of brain function to speculate about mood disorders and emotions. Emotions might be a tendency toward unusually high (or low) precision of … Continue reading →

I’ve been trying to delve deeper into predictive processing theories of the brain, and I keep coming across Karl Friston’s work on “free energy”. At first I felt bad for not understanding this. Then I realized I wasn’t alone. There’s … Continue reading →

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on barring racists from Britain.) It was published in the Observer, 18 March 2018, under the headline ‘Let’s not give up on the idea that a good education is a search for truth‘. Sam Gyimah is very taken by Moneysupermarket.com. Seven years ago, the newly […]

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . A brief history of Stephen Hawking: A legacy of paradox Stuart Clark, New Scientist, 14 March 2018 ‘I think most physicists would agree that Hawking’s greatest contribution is the prediction that black h […]

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on sports and ethics.) It was published in the Observer, 11 March 2018, under the headline ‘Aping populist attacks on migrants is not a winning strategy for the left’. On Christmas Eve 1980, Paul Mercieca, the communist mayor of Vitry, near Paris, led a ga […]

by Mr. Mean-Spirited I want you to be miserable. I want you to suffer. I want your life to be ruined. You deserve it. You deserve to be in pain. Every year that I have been alive, society has wronged me. Every day upon this earth, other people have caused me harm. It is only right and proper that others experience some of that hurt. Making other peopl […]

by Mr. Mean-SpiritedThe gamma male is usually depicted as some smarmy bastard who uses people to his own ends. And I am thinking: this is supposed to be a bad thing, right? The more conventional members of society tend to depict the gamma male as somebody who just won’t play the game. And I’m reflecting: damn, this all sounds pretty good to me. The gamma […]

by Mr. Mean-Spirited We’ve all seen Hollywood producers trying to defend themselves against claims of raping starlets. We’ve all heard of politicians trying to explain away multiple accusations of molesting interns. We’ve all watched news anchors trying to excuse their perverted exploitation of freshly-hired reporters. There sheer number of such claims mi […]

What, exactly, is a smug liberal? There’s been a lot of discussion, and even the beginnings of some reflection, on what this term means, and I personally think Vox writer Emmett Rensin nails it: smug liberals think half the country is gullible and dumb. The trouble is that stupid hicks don’t know what’s good for […]

International Women’s Day has come and gone once again with lots of press coverage that iterates some version of the idea that if you invest in women and girls, especially in their education, you produce an economic advantage that accrues to the whole society. I’ve been recasting my life lately into a state of nature, […]

As a Knight Fellow at Stanford, I was asked a lot to speak about how I made my website, Zambia Online, become so successful, and how some of my client web sites, like The (Zambian) Post website, grew so phenomenally. In principle, it is actually very easy. There are two aspects to this: the creative…

My Amazon kindle book, Barack Obama Vs Ayn Rand has reached a small milestone of receiving 30 comments from readers, the vast majority of them very positive and encouraging. I wrote the book as an imaginary debate after immersing myself in the writings and speeches of the two intellectuals: Obama and Rand. President Obama has…

Much progress is being made in genetic research that could soon show which populations have higher genes (alleles) for intelligence compared to others. Many people are excited about this, especially those in the hereditarian world who are fully convinced that their theories about racial differences will be finally confirmed. I predict that there will be…

4Racism.org shows that the fear of being called "racist" is very deadly and harmful. Anti-Racism, like the war against "racist" cops, causes thousands of deaths. So the excess American death toll in 2015 and 2016 from Obama’s war on cops was a little larger than the 4,424 combat fatalities from Bush’s war in Iraq. … Continue reading […]

I was contacted by a reporter for Huffington Post a few days ago, and gave her an interview by email. The article is now up, and I'd like to acknowledge that she was fair in her quoting of my comments. I would, however, like to post the entire interview here, since very little of what I told her actually made it to print. Her questions/comments are in b […]

So, Sargon of Akkad posted this to his channel the other day. I agree with a lot of his arguments. Yes, if alt right people want to wail about white genocide, maybe they should start having babies. That would be a start, no? On the other hand, I do have some concerns I'd love to hear Sargon's opinions on. I left the following as a comment on his vi […]

The book explains, bottom-up from biology why: * Domestic violence is mostly, indeed overwhelmingly female-perpetrated – the hormonal basis of female preference for violence in a couple context, and brain circuitry re male 'backing off' have been uncovered. *Women owe men after marriage break up, not the other way round – pair-bonding being nothing […]

Open borders means admitting immigrants who are rich and poor, persecuted and privileged, educated and uneducated, skilled and unskilled, from all countries. It means the opportunity for all people (with very few exceptions) to live in the country of their choice. Nevertheless, I often write about how open borders would help groups that are extraordinarily … […]

American immigration restrictions inflict immense suffering on immigrants and would-be immigrants. Thousands have died attempting to enter the U.S. through the desert, and others have perished attempting to make sea journeys. Tens of thousands languish each year in detention centers. Others are abused by government agents or criminals. Many are deported from […]

We have reached a time in history where helicopter parenting is no longer an adequate description for an over-involved approach. Parents are not only watchful over their kids…they hover over their kids. They tend to be upper-middle class. They dress well for the playground. They are overly polite (passive aggressive). Oh, and their children “speak” 2-3 […] […]

Here are 5 basic things (throughout your child’s life) that you can do to ensure you grow to hate them. Since some contradict each other in parenting style, I suggest picking 2 complimentary suggestions and focusing your efforts. 1. Make your baby a light sleeper. As you put your infant down for their nap, […]

East side mural, lighter I snapped this pic last weekend in East LA. I had a really great time reading at David Rocklin's amazing Roar Shack series at 826LA. I also had a wonderful meal beforehand at Triniti with a girlfriend.

🐍 There's a house in the San Fernando Valley that's not far from where I live, and the owner has filled the foliage growing in the section of dirt between the sidewalk and the curb with a collection of curious things. There are inspirational signs, small gnomes, a happy Buddha. I don't know who owns the house or what the purpose of this collec […]

Time to make myself unpopular with some people… Following the awful events in Manchester on Monday evening emotions are, understandably, running high. Sadly the same cannot be said for thought processes – although this hardly uncommon even when 22 men, women and children haven’t been brutally slain by a religious fanatic. Ignoring the usual twaddle […] […]

Over at City Metric, John Elledge is telling London commuters to stop worrying and learn to love today’s tube strike and the unions involved in it. Whilst he correctly notes that it’s not just the drivers who have withdrawn their labour, he has this paean to why what is a mostly dull (but occasionally very […]

Judas sold out for the sum of 30 pieces of silver. Two millennia later it would appear that the former director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, has decided that her price is a peerage and a position in the shadow cabinet. Is that, adjusted for inflation, more or less than Judas got?

Newton was an alchemist. Napier a numerologist. Kepler an astrologer. And Giordano Bruno — Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s poster child martyr for scientists persecuted by irrationally superstitious and corrupt institutions — was an occultist. The esoteric, the obscure, the fringe, the poetic, and the spiritual permeate the human intellectual landscape, both in the hu […]

huesoflife asked you: Hi I happened upon your tumblr because you liked one of my posts. Your posts are very intellectually stimulating so that makes me wonder, what are some of your favorite books? Also, I noticed that you have a myriad of interests, what major did you pursue in college, if you don’t mind me […]

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo-breach-3-billion-accounts/index.html http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/ https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud while all the lib […]

hahahaha, I can’t even make this shit up… if I was writing fake trollbait articles to make these dudes look bad, I couldn’t even come up with shit half as devious as what these fucks do IRL: https://anaannblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/white-trash-alert-matt-heimbach-arrested/ And according to Clarence in Baltimore/GL Piggy/Fire Power/Steve Sailer and their p […]

Brandon Adamson blogs at AltLeft.com – “The Left of the AltRight” Topics: How the Alt-Right is imploding and splitting into factions The incident with Matthew Heimbach and the disbanding of the Trad Workers Party The never ending hypocrisy of preachy Traditionalists The implausibility of success for […] The post Robert Stark talks to Bran […]

Keith Preston is the editor of Attack the System Topics: FBI Paid Best Buy’s Geek Squad to Spy on Customer Devices who are Passing over User Data Violations of the 4th Amendment which prohibits warrant-less searches based on no probably cause Farming out state repression to the private sector as a way to get […] The post Robert Stark talks to Kei […]

Robert Stark and co-host Brandon Adamson talk to returning guest ASHLEY MESSINGER. Ashley is based in the UK and writes for Brandon’s AltLeft.com. You can also find Ashley on Twitter. Topics: A continuation on the topic of a “Redpilled” SWPL culture and it’s viability The implicit Whiteness of progressive […] The post Robert Stark talks to […]

Whilst the EU ramps up internet censorship, particularly people's criticism of its policies, the Council of Europe calls for internet censorship to be transparent and limited to the minimum necessary by law

Agnostic has a post up in which he uses the GSS to look into some stats on gun-ownership, which inspired me to do the same to investigate some questions he might be interested in. The variables are OWNGUN and MARRIED, with SEX as the control variable.First just men: Statistics for SEX = 1(MALE) Cells contain: […]

There’s an unfinished draft of a post I last updated in 2010 intended to be a review of Karl Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation”. Reading Mark Koyama today made it concrete that I’m certainly never going to bother converting the notes I wrote into something coherent or checking the book out again to revisit anything, since […]

I don’t normally review fiction on this blog, but Starship Troopers is enough of a “novel of ideas” that this seemed the best venue to discuss it. Set aside all the scifi trappings, and the core of the book can be found in a later speech he gave which is sometimes reprinted under the title […]